Wow this is right up the road from me. IIRC this had one of the main repeaters for skywarn in this area on it.

Southwest Missouri Regional Skywarn’s main repeater is the N∅NWS Repeater operating on 145.490 MHz. with a standard minus 0.6 MHz. offset and a PL of 136.5 Hz. This repeater (pictured right) transmits and receives from antennas located atop a 1,000-foot-high commercial broadcast tower in Fordland, Missouri approximately 15 miles east of Springfied. This is a wide-area coverage repeater. It uses a Vertex VHF Repeater unit along with a CAT controller. A 100 amp DC power supply powers a 350 watt amplifier. It is the main linking hub which then connects to the following participating repeaters:

If anyone has additional news of any communications that may have been affected by this incident, please log your observations here. (Amateur, business, public safety, GMRS, cell systems, microwave interlink, etc.)

The PBS tower was just under 2000 feet high, so it may not be the same '1000 foot commercial broadcast tower' as listed in the data supplied above. Confirmation from local sources would be appreciated regarding interruption of any communication services.

There's some drone video up on www.ky3.com which is the local news station there in Missouri. The broadcast video shows a 2nd tower still standing near the location of the collapsed tower. I believe the newscaster mentions this tower being closer to 1900' tall. I have no knowledge if that's correct or not.

Devastating.

It's amazing that only one person was killed, but sad that it happened at all. Work was being done to reinforce the tower - apparently in anticipation of some upcoming re-pack work. This is the 2nd tragedy that I know of being blamed on re-pack work, the other one being earlier this year a tower near Miami where 3 workers were killed when rigging failed.

The 2000 foot fallen tower was owned by Missouri State University. The primary service was for KOZK-TV, channel 21, the PBS affiliate. Also on the tower was NOAA Weather Radio station WXL46, at 162.400MHz. Both of those stations are out of service till further notice,, and do not have backup facilities.

The above article incorrectly stated that KSMU-FM was also on this tower, but it is not. KSMU-FM is still on the air from it's primary tower location.

Suzanne Shaw, vice president for marketing and communications for Missouri State University, confirmed that KOZK-TV remains off the air, and that the collapse also affected the NOAH weather station, but not KSMU. Shaw said she had no estimate on when the station would be back on the air, but said they were talking with local broadcasters to partner with them in some way.

I do not believe that N0NWS has any repeaters at this location, but I have emailed the Ozark SkyWarn team to ask. If I hear back, I'll update this thread.

I am happy to say we are not on the PBS tower that fell, I am on the process of helping NOAA get their station back on the air, using one of our antennas, this will be the set up until they can get there antenna and coax installed on the same tower we are on,

Thanks for checking on us. It means a lot to me.

Michael Blake

So there is the official word from N0NWS.

On another note, for those who are not familiar with the "repack work" going on, our fabulously intelligent government has ordered all TV stations above channel 34 to "Re-Pack" themselves onto lower channels. This also means that some lower channels must move down the dial. Most must install new antennas. This is also causing the displacement of some FM stations, since lower channels means larger antennas for TV transmission.

The Government nuts are doing this because they have "Sold" all of the TV channels above 34 to the cellular phone and broadband companies, so the TV stations have to move out by the end of THIS YEAR!!! ...an impossible feat, but congress idiots seem to think that changing channels of a transmitter site is about the same as changing the channels on your TV set.

A colleague at a broadcast station in Mississippi mentioned to me that their upgrade was completed a couple weeks ago on their 2000 foot tower, by a crew that had three persons killed during an upgrade in Florida in September of 2017.